Souvenir shops sell thousands of replicas of these genuine signs, which are
also displayed on placemats, stickers and refrigerator magnets. Many of these
are gleefully bought by roadsign collectors, whose hobby may well be the 21st
century's version of stamp-collecting.

"Remember all those horrible Sunday afternoons. Just preparing to pamper
your stamps, and there is your wife asking to visit Aunt Willy," asks the
world's most dedicated roadsign collector, Bartolomeo Mecßnico, of Belgium.
"Nowadays, she appreciates your renewed love for Willy and the ever
different scenic drive to her home."

Over the last seven years, Mecßnico has collected thousands of roadsigns,
sent to him by fans ariund the globe, which he has indexed, annotated, and
posted on his ever-growing website. If you visit it, be sure to inspect the
Children in Austria page.

Two strange roadsigns are to be found in remote areas not far from the North
Pole. The first, in Norway, shows one of the world's shortest place names,
┼, and the other, in Canada's far north, delights in the name Ragged
Ass Road (more about that later).

┼ (population 150) is a tiny fishing hamlet in the Lofoten Islands, a
snow-capped granite chain off north-west Norway, above the Arctic circle.

How did ┼ (pronounced Aw) acquire its brief name? Elin Graner, who
conducts visitors through the Lofoten T°rrfiskmuseum, told us "┼
is an old word for a little river. There is a little river coming from the
mountains and it ends in the sea here, so that`s the reason for the name.

"┼ is the last letter in our alphabet, and the very end of the Lofoten
road. The ┼ sign on the road is stolen by tourists every year, so it was
decided to write ┼ i Lofoten instead, to avoid this (it would be too big
to steal).

"But then the population in ┼ said 'NO, the name of our place is ┼,
not ┼ i Lofoten,' so now there is a small sign with only one letter
again."

Elin said that although ┼ no longer has a landing station for fish, fisherman
families still live there. "Lofoten has been, and still is dependant
on stockfish [dried cod] production. It was the first commodity that the Vikings
exchanged for goods in other countries. ┼ used to be much larger than it is
to-day. Because it is difficult to get a job, young people move to other
places."

Another place with a single-letter name is the French village of Y
(pronounced E), near Amiens, in Picardy. It has only 29 inhabitants. Its
brief name, which dates back to 1241, is displayed on a sturdy signpost. Few
tourists visit or have even heard of the village, so the sign seems safe.

Across the Atlantic, in Canada, the Northwest Territory's capital city,
Yellowknife (population 17,600) is proud of its notorious Ragged Ass Road.
The City Council and Chamber Of Commerce both offer replicas of the
roadsign to tourists for $29.95. With frontier-town bluntness, a private
website says the name of the road "should make you raggedy-ass travellers
feel welcome."

The Northern Frontier Visitors Association says "Ragged Ass used to be
the name of a small gold mine. Some local citizens joked one night and thought
that the street should be named after Ragged Ass. The sign was made and placed
on a street in a part of Yellowknife's Old Town, which in the 1930s and 40s was
the only part of Yellowknife. Soon after the posting of the sign, it was adopted
as an official street name.

"The signs are now sold as a tourist item due in part to the fact that
they kept disappearing off the signpost marking the street. Even though
the sign is welded to the post, it still manages to walk away."

Click On These Roadsigns

A huge selection of odd roadsigns is displayed on the Internet.
Among the best are: